To control my travels through time there was no shortcut. I could not understand time any more than I already did, since I already knew everything instinctively, even if I could not consciously and rationally explain it all right now. Controlling the domain of all knowledge related to the present and the future came with reading the pages from the Ikons. What I needed was the wisdom to control and manipulate it as I wished. I needed to use my powers as much as possible.

And so I jumped to the future and began exploring it. The future I first came to was the same desolate future where all life was gone and the planet was a smoldering rock adrift in space. I had to keep jumping through time by a few days in order to survive, since the ability to jump through time seemed to protect me from the elements but I would lose that protection as soon as I settled into one time. I also knew, thanks to the knowledge I’d gained from the Book of the Future, that the future as I saw it was both definite and in flux.

There were no alternative futures or timelines in this world. There was always only one possible future, only one timeline, but my actions could change this timeline if I returned to the present. Naturally, I had to wonder how this would square with time paradoxes.

Famous physicist Stephen Hawking once held a birthday party for any future time travelers. The entire incident became a matter of record since it was published in his book and shared on television, which meant time travelers who came to the past should have tried to contact him. The fact that he had to spend that party alone, he reasoned, meant that either time travel had not been invented by humans in the future, or it was fundamentally impossible for people to travel to the past. Of course, he ignored the possibility that time travelers didn’t want to come to his party because he wasn’t cool enough. After all, who wouldn’t wanna party with Hawking?

Anyways, this meant the biggest puzzle in this situation was still time traveling to the past. Time traveling to the future had long since been considered theoretically possible, and had even become popular knowledge thanks to movies that showed off how intense gravity could make humans on far off planets experience time differently from humans on Earth.

But that raised the question: how could I return to the present? Was the present not the future’s past? Surely, from my perspective as an observer in the future, returning to the present was like traveling back in time?

No, that wasn’t how this spell worked. Perhaps if I moved permanently to the future, I would not be able to return to the present, but in reality, whenever I jumped into the future, I was not actually moving physically to a different point in space-time. Instead, my consciousness was looking into the future and experiencing it as if I was experiencing that time physically. I could not change anything in the future, at least not without moving there permanently and foregoing my presence in the present.

This meant I wasn’t really traveling back in time because I never truly traveled forward in time either. Perhaps this would change after I took over the Past, but for now, this was the best I could do. I would have to change the present the old fashioned way. And to do that, I had to learn to control my ability to jump into the future.

First, I began experimenting with jumping in smaller increments. At first, I could only jump millions of years in one go. Concentrating as hard as I could, I couldn’t make my jumps shorter than a few thousand years. Fortunately, even though I felt like I was experiencing time normally, my body and mind did not get tired at all, since I was actually still planted firmly in the present.

And so I spent what felt like years, jumping further and further into the future. The smoldering planet became more chaotic and even less habitable, with even the primordial sludge turning gray and lifeless. Soon, the atmosphere was gone and the sun in the sky was too large for me to see properly. I was protected from the dangers of this world, but it seemed like my ability to observe the future was still effected by things like light.

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Naturally, this made me want to cast my light magic to tone down the sunlight a little but that raised a new question. Could I cast spells in this state? I felt like I couldn’t interfere with the future without moving there, but could I cast a light spell that only changed my ability to see? As long as I wasn’t actually changing the brightness of my surroundings, I felt like it could work. It was, at the very least, worth a try.

I tried to cast the light spell but it almost killed me. By focusing on the light spell, I almost messed up my jumps to the future, which would have left me vulnerable to the insane heat and radiation of this future planet. I caught myself at the last second, and took a deep breath even though I wasn’t really breathing in this state at all.

Then, after collecting my thoughts and figuring out a way to multi-task, I tried again. This time, I managed to make the world appear just a little dimmer before I had to stop the light spell again. I had almost made the light spell fall onto the real future world, instead of just on my own little bubble in space-time. I would’ve been stuck in this future, completely unable to return!

Another steadying but unnecessary breath, and I returned to my experiments. Soon, I was able to cast the light spell while traveling to the future, and even managed to observe this future world before it got ripped apart by a barrage of powerful meteors and comets. There was even a powerful beam of light that passed close enough to the planet to mess up the orbit and send it closer into the sun. Soon, the entire planet was a wreck. The atmosphere was gone, there were craters everywhere, and the sky was filled with an angry ball of fire that would soon destroy this world completely.

It was hard to believe this was the same world. The only reason I knew for certain that this was the same world was because of the knowledge that filled my head and told me that the power to jump to the future was helping me stay on the surface of the planet. In fact, I was in the same place where my body was in the present, since that was where I had jumped from. My body in the present was like an anchor, and if something happened to it, I would become an untethered spirit, like a phantom stuck in time-limbo, haunting the nothingness for eternity.

Thankfully, that wasn’t gonna happen. Instead, I was slowly getting a hang of this future jumping thing and could already cast spells while jumping to the future. Rather than continue jumping until this planet was gone and I was stuck in the vast emptiness of space or in the middle of the sun, I decided to return to the present and start my next experiment.

My spirit jolted as I fell back into my body. Norn Izlandi lay on the ground beside me. An angry Simurgh was diving towards me, barely held back at the last moment by a smiling but wincing Immortal of Madness. Madness gave me a wink as he embraced the Simurgh like it was a long separated lover, which infuriated the Simurgh who began squirming out of Madness’ clutches and turned back to the man-like Immortal. The Evil Eye appeared with a frustrated look in its eye, since it had been flung away by Madness like trash. The three Immortals continued to battle it out as I put my hand on Norn and tried to learn the Past once again.

The Simurgh broke free and shrieked as it dove towards me. My eyes opened as the ground shook and I had to jump to the side. Norn was surrounded by a bed of feathers, each a different color. The bed of feathers began to float away, taking Norn with it.

That wasn’t fair. I bit my lips and prepared for the next experiment.

I jumped into the future, walked towards Norn, wrapped her body in magic hands, and ran as far as I could. Then, I kicked a rock with my feet, which made my body jerk in one direction. I pulled on my magic hands at the same time, making Norn fly towards me.

In the sky, the Simurgh had gotten really close to my old position, but now I was nowhere to be seen. The Simurgh turned to me instantly, gave me a glare, and tried to rush over, but was halted by a silver mirror.

I put my hand on Norn’s head and tried again.